OGDEN MESSIAH/ Sample Chapters

a novel by

Antonio Hopson

Prologue

Abeque-Abeque is a name used by the Chippewa meaning: Never Leaves Home. His brash, loud-mouthed grandmother christened him this because he often needed to be forcibly removed from his mother’s breast.  Abeque-Abeque, he would sometimes hear her saying in his head. You know a man cannot live on milk alone! She insulted in this manner until he was a teenager, always pushing him to live life more like his great ancestors.

Abeque-Abeque’s grandfather called himself a fur trader and was so often absent from home that he only recognized the old man if he were dressed in a hat and coat. As late as 1970, grandfather wore buckskins and moccasins, donned a 'coon skin hat and wore a rifle strapped around his back. It was the same rifle that his great-great grandfather, a Chippewa warrior, had used to shoot white settlers along Escanaba Bay. Grandfather would trudge through swamps hunting for animals possessing fur that could be legally killed and worn.  In fact, the old man had probably used his dementia as a means to stay as far away from grandmother as possible. 

 Abeque-Abeque’s father died when he was still a baby -- hit by bus on his way to Minneapolis to look for work. Alexis had gained a local reputation as a poet because he smiled a lot and almost never spoke. His prose was good enough to make Abeque-Abeque’s beautiful, quiet-hearted mother swoon. “What good is a poet,” grandmother had scolded her daughter, “on a reservation, where people only care about two things --bingo and peppermint schnapps?” But Abeque-Abeque knew from school that the Chippewa were people inclined to poetry. One poem he especially liked went this way:

 I am walking

Toward calm and shady places
I am walking

on the earth.

In his dreams sometimes Abeque-Abeque saw his father gliding through a field of blond grass that had gone to seed. While Alexis had not been in Abeque-Abeque’s life to impart wisdom, in the dream, when all was quiet and still, he could hear his father breathing a poem into his ear.

Float onto tomorrow,

we have lost what is our sum.

Your loneliness, your dreams can wait

until the whole does come:

Breaking

up

your

unending

forever

Abeque-Abeque’s mother was a poet of a different sort. She made use of her hands, spinning sine and feathers together into the most exquisite Dream Catchers.  The art was distinctly Chippewa. When hung above a bed, bad dreams were caught in the web and good dreams were allowed to pass. One night while his grandmother was playing bingo and drinking Peppermint Schnapps, Abeque-Abeque sat and watched his mother sew.  She placed the finished Dream Catchers in one of two baskets. Abeque-Abeque asked why.

“One is for the tourist,” she told him, “and the other is for the people of Sault, Ste. Marie.”

Abeque-Abeque can still remember the musky-sweet scent of his mother; her wool blanket saturated with maple sugar harvested in the spring. It was hard to leave his mother’s side when she smelled so good. He asked her why he had been named a girl’s name --a name used as a taunt by his grandmother.

 “I told you this already. When you was a little baby,” his mother smiled at him, “you would cry and cry when you were not in my arms.”

He asked her why she had let the old woman get away with such an insult.

“Oh,” she said. “I suppose it’s because she is gram ma'ma.”

Ultimately it was not the teasing, or the fear of leaving his mother’s side that made him move to sunny New Mexico --it was a dream that one of his mother’s dream-catchers had let slip through into his unconscious. 

In the dream Abeque-Abeque was visited by a wise old man dressed in a white robe and wearing silver braids that touched the ground. Even though the man looked like an older version of his father, Abeque-Abeque knew that it was not. “Son?” the figure asked, standing near a frozen brook. Abeque-Abeque knew it was coyote --the trickster and part-time prophet.

“A man who could find his way back from the afterlife,” Abeque-Abeque suggested, “should recognize his own son.”

“Yes,” coyote admitted. “You are correct. This is why I chose you --because you are smarter than your family thinks. And also, you are a trustworthy person. I apologize for resorting to such simple tricks, but would you have listened to me if showed up as talking dog?” Abeque-Abeque did not answer; instead he looked into the frozen brook where he saw an image of himself sleeping.

“I am here with a message for you.” Abeque-Abeque turned and looked into the distance. He could see his home of Sault Ste. Marie backlit by the rising, yellow moon. There were no lights on in any of the houses, only long dark shadows. “The message is from a very interesting . . . how shall I say this so you will understand . . . entity? Do you understand that boy? The entity is not like a man or animal, instead, it is a thing that resembles a thousand-thousand trees, all connected together at their roots. The flesh of the trees becomes me, and then I speak to you. You live in the flesh. Do you understand?” coyote sat on its tail. “The trees know that you want to leave this place --and you will. But for you to leave and to prove your grandmother wrong, you must do the trees a favor.” Coyote had captured his attention and Abeque-Abeque turned to stare into his lurid, glowing tapetums. “Now this is very important . . . so you better listen up . . . you must figure out a way for the buffalo to fly on your wings.  Did you hear that? The buffalo is a messenger, a messenger from the trees.”

 Abeque-Abeque looked across the field where one of the shadows lit up. It was the light to his bedroom window and soon he saw himself sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes, thinking about the dream.

Abeque-Abeque would not hear from coyote for another fifteen years.

Day One...

State Highway 35 –Idaho

Jackson sits in a diner filled with lucky flies, dust, coffee stains and nasty coughs from old man Dick.

“I’ll see you tomorrow Dick,” says a waitress. She keeps one eye on a hobbling old man and the other on a stream of hot coffee she is pouring into a cup.

“OK. I’ll see you tomorrow,” the old man tells her, but Jackson only gives him a fifty-fifty chance.

Outside comes the roar of a semi and Jackson looks up from his meal just as the truck slows to make a hairpin turn off Highway 84. He watches the lonesome café’s wavy reflection weave through the rounded, double-chrome tinted tanks. The truck is close enough that he can make out his own image moving through the metal.  

“That’ll do,” a customer says.  The customer waves his hand, signaling the handsome waitress to stop pouring. His voice cuts through the grinding brakes of the semi outside. The New York Times he is reading stays upright as he takes a sip behind it. A crisp Stetson hat rests on the table next to a half empty pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes. On the floor is a bloated green, canvas sack with the initials J.T.B. stitched on the side.

Jackson takes an interest in the man, but only because he has nothing better to do. So far he has learned two things about the stranger: the man has a slight but unapologetic southern drawl and his nails are kept trim and clean.  Jackson takes a moment to count the amount of times he has fastidiously cleaned his own nails with a new camping knife: four times. Once at the gas station in Cle Elm, once while waiting in line at a grocery store packed with more customers than cans of soup and twice while eating lunch here in Eden.

The man shuffles his paper; grunts disgust and turns the page.

Jackson returns to eating his sandwich. A sandwich filled with enough beef brisket to satisfy a T-Rex. The meat is laid on a mattress of homemade bread oozing with barbecue sauce so sweet he thinks about purchasing a gallon of the junk.

An image appears in his head: Fluffy cornbread drenched in this greasy sauce, drizzled all over. He struggles to remember the last time he has eaten cornbread –was he six or twelve? Perhaps it was not cornbread he remembered tasting, but rather the taste of his foster father’s potato cakes. Jackson takes in another mouth full, mixing the memories and taste. 

For a moment, he forgets his malaises; grins, and listens to the sound of children playing somewhere he cannot see. He breathes in more of the smells around him –barbecue sauce, grease, leather, and dust.

The rumbling of the truck picks up again and soon, with distance, begins to fade into the canyon walls.

 Eden Idaho, population: twelve, Jackson guesses; a town located at the foot of a monolithic canyon.  Though the sun was noon high, Eden remained in the canyon’s shadow. Even lonely truckers passed it by.

Jackson removes a clean paper napkin from the dispenser, the third he has used since sitting down for lunch. He dips a corner into a glass of melted ice water and begins neatly ridding his hands of the stubborn sauce. Dick has finally made it through the door. Jackson increases the old man’s odds to sixty/forty.

“You from Philadelphia?” the waitress asks. Jackson looks at her confused.

“That hat, Boss.” She points to his ruby-red baseball cap stitched with a stylish “P”. “My kid knows all them baseball teams.” She nods out the window where a boy and his older sister are playing.

“I was born in Philly but I haven’t been there in a long time,” Jackson tells her politely. “Now I live in Seattle.”

“Yeah?” she says. “You don’t look like you’re from around here.” The waitress articulates exactly what Jackson has felt most of his life.

No, shit. He thinks.

“What ya’ got there, Mister?” she asks, noticing a small notebook on the table. “You a writer or something?”

“No,” Jackson explains. “This is a list of things I was going to do on my vacation.” 

            “Going to?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Change your mind?”

            “I don’t know,” he volunteers, “just kind of lost interest. Thought I’d drive until something enticed me to stay.” Key West was his ultimate goal, driving the panhandle, cruising the islands: turquoise water, bone-colored sand, losing himself in a haze. He wished for a route to Key West that did not take him through the south. But the south is unavoidable: his fear of heights outweighed his fear of Mississippi.    

            “And you found Eden on the map – didn’t ja?”

            Jackson smiles at the waitress; partially annoyed, but also he finds relief in hearing a voice different from his own. After two days on the road he has run out of things to criticize about his life.

            “Don’t be embarrassed, Mister. You ain’t the only one who ever came here and been disappointed. The people who come here,” she crosses her ankles the way a waitress does when she is ready to talk for hours, “they all think they got troubles too big to do anything about, so they pull out their map and try to find someplace inspirational, and what do they find? A little town named Eden.” She waves her freehand out the window. “There’s a place called Inspiration, Arizona, but I ain’t never been there. People come here hoping to find something they lost a long time ago, but all they find is a postcard, the ones right over there, fifty-nine cents plus tax.” She winks and pops her gum. “Look, we even planted a little apple tree right outside. We water it every day!”

            “Can you wrap this up?” Jackson asks. “I’ll eat the rest on the road.”

            “I’ll be quick about it, Mister. That way you can get onto completing your list of things you don’t think you’ll do.” She takes up his plate, his coffee and the melted ice water in one swoop.

            “Thank you,” he tells her.

            “Good luck,” she says, and disappears behind the counter laughing.

            Jackson sighs deeply.

            “Wasn’t it Bob Dylan who said it first?” the man with the New York Times grumbles and then turns the page without revealing his face. “Or was it Socrates?”

            “Said what?” Jackson asks.

            “The waitress,” the stranger says to his newspaper, “what that waitress just said to you.”

Jackson sits upright and imagines the face behind the paper: a southern face, etched in drowsy round lines, a sideways grin --perhaps from too much Moonshine or songs blown through a jug. Crazy-ass backwater drifter.  What did the man expect from him? Pardon me, but would you please pass the Grey Poupon?  Jackson’s grin fades as he catches glimpse of the article that the customer is reading. “President Says No to Slave Repatriations and Apology”.

“Saxis te petent et deinde inquiunt felicitas,” the stranger says in a clear voice. Jackson’s eyes widen –an educated, backwater drifter!

            “You speak Latin?”

            “Yes,” the stranger answers.

            “May luck laugh with me?”

            “Your Latin is rusty, brother.” The stranger declares.

“Yes,” Jackson admits. “It’s the first time I’ve used it in the real world.”

“There was a time when Latin was the language of the intellectual –a sign of the modern mind.” The stranger turns a page, disappointed, Jackson thinks. “Now it’s a pompous decoration. A sorry, secret handshake used to identify blue-blooded aristocrats or wannabes.” 

             “Latin’s a dead language,” Jackson says searching for his wallet. “After today I doubt I’ll need it again.”

He lifts himself from the table.

            “She thinks you’re a fool,” the stranger says, “your being here.”

            “I’m starting to agree with her.” Jackson says.

            “It’s a shame,” the stranger answers. “You belong here in Eden just as much as she does, or that cook who’s been eyeing you since you first walked in.”

            Jackson makes eye contact with the cook; suppresses a shiver.

            “I won’t be here much longer.”

            “It will be the same where ever you go,” the stranger says.

            “It doesn’t take a modern mind to figure that one out--”

            “No,” the stranger admits. “I suppose you’re right, brother.”

The stranger turns another page and Jackson can make out more details. He is handsome, but gruff. There is no threat on his tempered face, only the perpetual look of boredom, brought out by permanent worry lines under his cheeks, bending his lips into a mild scowl. A strong-set jaw flattens out his chin and a scratchy, salt-and-peppered beard covers his face. His eyes are hidden slits. Jackson notes two different scars: one under his eye –a pink smear, long ago healed and a recent surgical scar starting at the base of his neck and ending under his bushy hair.

 “They’ll stone you and then say good luck,” the stranger says in a rolling timbre. “That’s what Bob Dylan said, but it sounds better in Latin.”

The two are silent for a spell; sizing each other up without making eye contact. After a long silence a child’s laugh rings out. Jackson glances outside where he spies a boy in scrappy jeans and a Mariners baseball cap. The child is violently shaking Eden’s only apple tree while an older girl in a red dress scoops up its fallen fruit.

“You’re right,” Jackson tells the New York Times, “it does sound better in Latin.” He removes a twenty from his wallet and lays it on the table.

* * *

Outside the heat presses down; the dust, and the glare from a lemon sun has finally appeared from the shadows. Jackson wads up the belly of his green tee shirt, across the front of which is written 'IDAHO: ITS NOT FOR SALE', a shirt he purchased at a roadside stand to appear to be a native. He wipes sweat from the top of his head with the cool cotton; squints.

            Eagle-eyed, the cook continues to watch him, but Jackson does not care. His malaise is complete, and a harsh glare from a short-order misanthrope is sauce for the goose.

He reaches inside his car, a black and silver Jeep Wagoneer and grabs hold of a road atlas on the dash. The heat rises from the cabin, wave upon wave, overpowering his eyes and breath. He leaves the door open, hoping the cabin will cool. On the hood of the car he opens the map and with his finger carefully traces a black line starting in Seattle and weaves a path south through Idaho, Utah, New Mexico, Texas and the South. The line terminates at the end of State Highway 1, Florida.

“Adam and Eve,” a voice says too close for comfort. “They couldn’t help themselves either, now could they?”

Jackson turns on a heel.

“Pardon me?”

“You heard me, brother.”

Jackson folds the map slowly, eyeballing the café. Through the window, he finds the cook cutting meat with a cleaver –still watching him. He taps the waitress on the shoulder and they both turn to watch the confrontation.

 “Adam and Eve were children too --like those imbeciles over there destroying what’s left of that tree.” The stranger says. “Ironic, don’t you think?”

Jackson eyes the man. Up close the stranger is gentler looking but with slightly profane features. His face is etched with deep lines revealing his age, weariness and disappointment –coming together like a sad stone sculpture. He is tall and simply dressed: a white oxford-shirt and expensive looking slacks.

“I see kids having fun,” Jackson says.

“Exactly.” The stranger’s slits open, revealing blue-gray eyes. “Innocence is what got us into this mess, isn’t it?  No–” he corrects, and waves a slender hand in benediction, “not innocence, ignorance!” The children are now screaming with glee as each apple falls into the dust. “The Bible portrays our thirst for knowledge as temperate, yes? A mild and innocent curiosity. But look at ‘em! I don’t think it happened like that all – I think we stole from God’s tree like what you’re seeing there; eager, hungry --gauche!”

The boy wants the last apple to fall but the tree resists. He looks around, searching.  He finds a yellow plastic bat and casts the toy up into the branches. A twig snaps, but not the apple.

Jackson does not fear the threat of violence from the man; he knows that the stranger’s lithe frame could not take him in a physical contest. But under his smooth southern persona there existed the prospect of trouble.

The boy cannot fling the bat high enough to reach the last of the fruit and now must rely on his sister to boost him up the trunk. He finds a toehold and another until he is midway up the tree. Hurry Kyle! I want that apple, you hear?  The boy pauses and looks down at the void beneath him. The tree bends forward and the girl, sensing his trepidation, begins launching apples at him. Get up, there, ya’ sissy . . . go on now, don’t be a chicken . . .

Jackson begins dismissing himself; curtly he hopes. He has places to think about seeing, or not seeing and more criticizing to do. 

“Can I ask you question, brother?” the stranger looks away from the children and steps in front of the driver’s side door. 

“It’s a free country,” Jackson says, ready to break him in two.

“I’ve spent some time at your Alma Mater,” the stranger says with a waggish grin. “Princeton is fine institution, but how come you wound up there and not Harvard?”

The handsome waitress has stepped out into the heat. She bawls out at the girl.

            “You stop that right now, Gloria! You stop it, or I’ll wallop you good.” The girl launches another, hits her brother on the thigh and he screams out.

“I went where I was accepted,” Jackson grins.

“I figured as much, brother.” Every time the stranger says the word brother, it comes out sounding like 'bra-tha’.

“You saw my bumper sticker?”

“Yes, brother.”

“Well,” Jackson says deciding not to be insulted, “you make a better preacher than you do a mystic.”

“I don’t see the difference,” the stranger smiles.

“Well,” Jackson explains. “A mystic would know that I need to hit the road.”

“And a preacher?”

“A preacher,” Jackson says without blinking, “would just keep talking.”

 The stranger stops smiling, turns and moves aggressively towards the tree.

“Hey, man?” Jackson calls after him. “Why don’t you let their Momma handle it?”

“That boy needs help,” the stranger says. He walks a beeline through the parking lot, kicking up dust. A hot tailwind speeds ahead of him. The girl, laughing outrageously, does not see the man coming for her. She rearms and launches another apple, this time striking the boy in the head.

“Gloria!” cries the waitress.

The stranger bursts at the girl, catches her cocked arm.

“No!” he hollers.

 She is stunned by his force and begins to cry out more violently than her brother.

“Momma!”

The cook, with a heavy gait and his cleaver in hand, follows the waitress who is running for the girl. Jackson mumbles, oh shit, and moves to intercept him.

“Mister!” the waitress wails out at the stranger. “You take your god damned hands off of my little girl!”

The stranger is now down on one knee, scolding the terrified girl: “Do you want to hurt that little boy up there?  Do you want to knock him out of that tree and maybe kill him?”

“Momma, he’s hurting me!”

Jackson steps in front of the cook but the robust man attempts to sidestep him.

“You get the hell out of my way,” the cook spits, “or you’re gon’na get some of this too!”

The waitress scoops up her daughter with her tray arm and points fiercely at the stranger with the other.

“You bastard! You get the hell out of here before I call the sheriff! You hear?”

Jackson takes hold of the passing cook with a textbook spinning-arm-lock. He squeezes extra hard, even after the sweaty man drops the cleaver.

“Take it easy,” he tells him.

Snap!

The limb holding the boy breaks, releasing him into the ether. Jackson witnesses the future unfold: a child with a broken neck, lying awkward in the dust.

The boy’s arms reach out; he crashes through branch after branch, twisting in mid air and falls into the waiting arms of the stranger.

The waitress lets her daughter loose and instantly snatches up her son. She meets the stranger’s eyes and sees that they are the same shade as Eden’s sky at dusk. Sometimes on cold winter mornings, after the nor’easters have swept the clouds away, she has seen a hue that she now understands as forever. The man’s eyes do not blink; they simply look into her with a haunting, unanswerable question.

“I’m going to release you now, Sir.” Jackson tells the cook. He places a foot on the cleaver. “But you have to behave, alright?” The man continues to struggle, even though Jackson still has a fierce grip.

“I’m calling the sheriff,” he grunts. “And he don’t fuck around with you people.”

“You people?” Jackson squeezes a little harder and the cook stops struggling. “I think we should call it even,” he explains. “The man saved that little boy.”

The cook nods and Jackson lets him go, nice and easy.

“I wish someone would’ve told me a thing or two when I was a child about doing something so stupid,” the stranger explains to the spellbound mother. “You’re not going to tell me that she didn’t deserve a good scolding, are you? Or that you never did anything that deserved a few harsh words?”

The cook massages his shoulder; his anger soon departs. He approaches the stranger and looks him in the eye.

“My knife?”

“Yes,” the stranger says, turning his blues to Jackson. 

“You and him better find yourselves lost, mister.” the cook says nodding at the mother. “. . . hell hath no fury.”

Jackson digs the knife out of the dust and cautiously hands it to the man blade first. The cook takes the knife as if it were sacred; eyes the waitress, who is down on one knee rocking and singing to her whimpering boy. The cook gathers the three and leads them back into the empty café.

 “I need a ride to Ogden,” the stranger says, tipping his Stetson above his eyes.

“Sorry, I’m headed north,” Jackson says.

 “You’re a liar,” the stranger says. 

“I’m on vacation,” Jackson explains without a hint of apology. “I don’t need the extra work.”

The stranger points at the map.

“Key West?”

 “I haven’t decided.”

The waitress flings opens the door and yells out at them both.

“If you’re not out’a here in five seconds, I’m gonna’ call the sheriff. And he don’t like no child molesters.”

Jackson sits in the car and rolls down the window.

 “Good luck,” he says.

“You need air in your left-rear tire, brother” the stranger says.

 Jackson starts the engine and a blast of hot air hits him in the face. The stranger takes a step back from the revved up car. 

 “They’ll stone you,” he says.

He releases the handbrake and pops the car into gear. The transmission lurches and the tires spin in the dirt. As he speeds away he glimpses the stranger in his rearview mirror: a cloak of dust enveloping the dark figure.

Jackson allows the guilt to drain from body; but the stranger’s eyes continue to burn his retinas, sharp as the yellow sun ahead of him.

State Highway 13 –Idaho

It is dusk and Jackson is listening to acid jazz. The electric guitar warbles. The base is brawny and the drummer’s high-hats sizzle. Cool air is blowing through the open window. Junipers fly by in a black blur and the smell of sage fills his nose. A hazy light crowds in on the valley –a beleaguered valley dejected by time, littered with lost hummocks and crumbling mesas.

Jackson looks into the gathering night.

In his childhood home of Philadelphia he seldom looked up. Trouble came from that direction; random screams, curses and words acrid enough to burn through his ebony hands. No matter how hard he pressed them against his ears, the sounds seeped through the walls and closed doors. Sometimes, as he left his mother’s apartment for school he would stop in the hall and listen to her muffled sobs. Passing buses and busy merchants could not drown out her cries.

Even then he knew he was powerless to save her. His mother’s surroundings was infused into her sadness; the broken-down cars left on the streets, the weedy lots, the litter and black mold.

Jackson remembers listening to her parade of songs from his bed: Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, and Gladys Knight. On rare occasions she would play George Clinton’s funk. He would hear her giggling like the older girls at school who giggled when they watched a boy named Jerome Washington showing off in the halls. He could not remember ever seeing his mother smiling, much less giggling. She always wore an unyielding but fragile expression on her strong features, the kind of expression doctors use to deliver bad news.

The music might play for an hour or two, and the sounds of her shuffling feet moved to the rhythm. Jackson would fall into a drowsy state, relieved not to hear her sadness. While he waited for the candlelight and music to fade, and the sweet, pungent smell of what must have been marihuana to dissipate, he gazed out his window into Philadelphia’s opaque skies. 

But he had not seen stars in all there splendor until he was sixteen, living in Maryland’s suburbs with his foster family. There were no streetlights in there; no need to illuminate the shadows.

This time tomorrow he would be camping in Arches Nation Park, where draped over canyon country, a velvet sky awaits. He would see stars again –stars unmasked by the city’s soot and ash, patterns stitched into the void that told stories and suggested purpose. Each point a reference, beckoning . . . beckoning . . .

 Jackson pushes the Wagoneer to sixty and then eighty; he fades into an eastbound stretch of Highway 13, a road that takes him straight into the canyon. Crowding in on all sides are the inky black mountains; elusive stacks of soot, hiding their peaks in the silhouettes of still more mountains. Down in the valley there is only the road; twilight has erased all else. Except vague object, lit by the Wagoneer’s headlights.

 Cactus?

 Tumbleweed? 

The object grows nearer.

 Jackson’s eyes gain focus and he realizes that the object is not a desert plant, but something conscious, something moving into the highway’s centerline. He eases his foot off the accelerator.

“Jesus Christ!”

The object is a man; standing in the road, his thumb out, calmly waiting to be picked-up, veered around, or shattered.

            Jackson pulls the car into the northbound lane. A pack of gum and his Miles Davis CDs race over the dashboard.

Jesus Christ

 The tires correct themselves on the road and Jackson is able to concentrate on the dark figure. His eyes strain to see through the dirt and bug-splatter. In the beams of his headlight he recognizes the face of the stranger. A perpetual half grin twisted into the corner of his lips, crow’s feet at his eyes, leather for skin . . . and the burning, icy-blue eyes.

The speedometer touches thirty, but Jackson can clearly read the expression on the traveler’s face: it is the expression of pleasure –as if the mind behind those eyes were drawing in prey.

Jackson snatches the car off the road and into the desert. He hits a few plants. The ass end of the car catches up and suddenly, with his heart racing faster than the engine, he is back in the eastbound lane. Jackson resists looking into the rear-view mirror until he is certain that the stranger has disappeared.

The wind whistles. Jackson draws in a breath, sucking in reality as if it were pure oxygen. A Tumbleweed is stuck in the Wagoneer’s grill.

Jackson drives another twenty-five miles before he loosens his grip on the wheel. I stopped for gas in Malta –ten minutes. I had a sandwich, used the can, stretched and then hit the road. The stranger’s sudden appearance was like some bizarre logarithm: two men sit in a café idly eating lunch; after an altercation the two men leave the café at approximately the same time; one of the men leaves on foot and the other in an automobile; the average speed of the man in the automobile is sixty miles per hour and the man on foot tops out at five; two hours later, the men meet again.  Jackson refuses mystic circumstances. Somewhere, there was a logical explanation; a missed bit of information he has overlooked. That asshole must have hitched a ride from some trucker who knew a shortcut through the canyon. The trucker must have tired of the stranger’s bullshit and dropped him off in the middle of the desert. Still, what were the chances they’d come together again? Jackson estimates one in two-hundred thousand. The only other explanation for the rendezvous was design.

Jackson presses on the accelerator and speeds through a taut stretch of road. A dirt devil blows over the highway and the Wagoneer melts into the aberration. He looks down at his temperature gage –the engine is running cool but his hands are once again steel traps locked on the steering wheel. Every so often the driver’s side tire finds a turtle in the centerline. He takes more breaths and looks up at the stars where Orion glitters at him coldly.   

            There were times when he wished he had listened to his foster father; followed his heart and become an astronomer. So many stars in the heavens astounded him, each point of light a beacon of possibilities; some of them, no doubt, contained undiscovered worlds with life and culture. Sometimes while crunching numbers at his desk he would allow his mind to wander to those places: vistas with ringed nebulas folded into the horizon of alien worlds, skylines drenched with stars, galaxies, rising moons and comets running by.  His eye on Orion, Jackson calculates that had he continued Princeton’s program he likely would have wound up teaching science in some middle school --hardly a success by Ivy League standards. A master’s degree was not in his heart, to say nothing of a PhD. Astronomers were brilliant, out of the ordinary individuals with enough degrees to wallpaper a living room. Receiving a bachelors from Princeton was enough to kick his ass.

“Population resources?” he says aloud, and the act of self deprecation ironically begins to soothe his nerves. Five years of hell at Princeton –two of them backtracking out of astrophysics, all for a degree in Population Resources. How the fuck did I wind up with a degree in statistics? 

            “Shit!”

The dark cabin suddenly explodes with light: cherry-red and acid blue. Jackson lifts his foot off the accelerator, taps the brakes and parks the Wagoneer. It takes a few moments for the officer to appear.

            “Do you know how fast you were driving?”

The deputy’s face changes from blue to red. It is the middle of the night and he is wearing mirrored sunglasses.

            “About eighty-six,”

            “Yes,” the deputy says harshly, “that’s right exactly.”

            “Is this about Eden?” Jackson asks. “Because I have never seen that man in my life before today.”

            “Eden is not my jurisdiction.”

            “Do you get many hitch-hikers out here on this road?”

            “I’ll ask the questions--”

            “All right.”

            Jackson settles back in his seat.

            “You don’t seem to care very much about the trouble you are in,” the officer puts his face in the window, “do you, now?”

            “I do care,” Jackson apologizes. “I was speeding, what I can say?”

“I don’t like your attitude,” the officer spits, “or your reckless disregard for Idaho’s speed limit.”

            “Serious shit.” Jackson grins.

The deputy stiffens; steps back from the car.

            “Get out of the car.”

            “What?” Jackson demands. “Man, just give me the ticket.”

The deputy takes another step back from the Wagoneer; rests his gloved hand on his sidearm and notes Jackson’s change in attitude. 

            “That’ a boy,” he tells him, “nice and easy.”

Jackson eases out of the car.

 “Hands up now, boy.”

Jackson complies.

            “You treat everybody who does ten over the speed limit like this?”

            “Try thirty,” the officer barks, “the speed limit here is fifty-five.”

            “There isn’t any one around for miles.”

            “Why you takin’ Highway Thirteen?” the deputy snaps, “don’t nobody take this road unless they’re avoiding trouble.”

            “I’m on vacation.”

            “Where you headed?” The officer is in his late fifties, drained of color and looks like he has just finished a marathon.

            “Key West,” Jackson says honestly, “I think.”

            “You think?”

            “Yeah, I haven’t decided.”

            “You got a map in there?”

            “Yes.”

            “How come you didn’t take Highway Eighty-four?”

            “I’m not in any rush,” Jackson says. 

            “The highway you’re on criss-crosses Eighty-four three times before it lets out of this canyon. You’re either a fool or you’re avoidin’ trouble.” The deputy thinks a moment; he could be onto something or maybe nothing at all.  “I’m going to secure you until I figure out what the hell is going on.”

            “Officer!” Jackson says. “Is it illegal to use this highway?”

            “Don’t you patronize me, boy!”

            “Don’t you call me boy again --you cracker-ass, hick-for-brains-mother-fucker.”

The officer removes his glasses.  He takes a step back, points a finger at Jackson.

“Get some ID out now!” he hammers. “It looks like we have a long night ahead of us.”

Jackson slowly retrieves his wallet.

            “That’s it. Nice and slow,” the officer he tells him. “Now drop it on the ground next to your feet. That’s good. Now kick it over here where I can get to it.”

            With an eye on Jackson and his hand on his gun, the deputy squats to pick up the wallet. Jackson rolls his eyes in disgust --what awful procedure! If he were a criminal he would have used the awkward moment to sink his boot into the deputy’s chin, smash his jaw and render him unconscious or dead.

 “You from Idaho?” the deputy grunts.

            “No,” Jackson says. “But you folks seemed worried that I might stick around for a little while.”

The deputy takes up the wallet, but before he opens it he notices Jackson’s green shirt.

            “How come’ you wearing that shirt?”

            “It’s a souvenir.” Jackass, Jackson thinks.

            “Cute,” the deputy says. “Is this your vehicle?”

            “What kind of a question is that?”

            “It’s a question you need to answer.”

             “Yes, it’s my vehicle.”

Even in a “progressive” metropolis like Seattle, Jackson wished that he lived up to the stereotype of being black. Once, while waiting for a friend to return from shopping he watched a man greet him with a pleasant smile, walk away ten paces and then suddenly return to his car to remove a laptop computer.  People were disgusting little squires, weren’t they? Despite all their attempts to separate themselves from the animal, it all came down to territory. And those in this territory looked different, smelled different and communicated different than others and therefore were a threat and should be destroyed  --nasty little animals, smelling their way through life’s descending arc with a brain too simple to see, too wired for conflict.   

            The deputy opens the wallet like a little prayer book and Jackson’s silver badge shimmers in the moonlight.

            “Special Agent?”

            “Yes,” Jackson admits, so what if he was only an F.B.I analyst. He was still licensed to carry a gun.

“Is this a joke?” the deputy is stunned.

“I ask myself that on occasion,” Jackson snatches up his wallet and tosses it into the car. He does so with such speed and stealth that the deputy stammers back, knowing that the move could just as easily have been a jab to the throat, or a punch in the face.  “Now would you mind removing your hand from your sidearm and write me that god damned ticket?”

“Yes, Sir.” The deputy says.

“Oh, now it’s Sir.” Jackson says, and then mumbles. You pathetic little squirrel.

* * *

Another twenty miles approaches and then disappears into Jackson’s peripherals. Black bushes and crooked tress blur by.  Stitched into the sky are stars, burning slowly. He cannot understand the distance between them; he cannot calculate the darkness. The air rushing in feels as cold as space. He wishes he had never locked eyes with the stranger. 

* * *

A dilapidated building appears. It is the only sign of civilization Jackson has seen for nearly an hour: a gas station hiding under a windswept mountain. The outpost looks as if some mean old cowboy kicked it in the gut and left it die in the middle of the desert. Jackson’s muscles are woven into a knot and an ache in his lower spine throbs through his bladder. He parks the Wagoneer. Sets the break and stares off into the horizon. 

Parked next to a weedy gasoline island is a ’57 Chevy pick-up truck with a dancing Hula doll on the dash, empty tins of tobacco and two leering men in the cab. Its personalized license plate reads: NTEMARE. Even in the darkness, the truck’s paint shines blood red.

There is a light on in the office and a shadow in the window. The light attracts bugs that Jackson has never seen nor wanted to know exist –gargantuan beasts, buzzing desperately, panicked or perhaps in ecstasy. A few fly into the hazy-blue hue of a bug zapper hanging over the entrance. He stops and watches a confused moth crash into the electric coil not once, not twice but three times before its execution is complete.

A skinny man with a pencil-thin goatee steps from the cab of the truck.

“What’s up?” Jackson asks.

“Them stars.”

The man’s eyes are feral.

 “Right.”  Jackson answers.

            “Are you lost, Mister?” he is missing a front tooth and unconsciously places his tongue in the void.

            “Shit no, I’m not lost,” Jackson says as if he was from Rome. “But I’m looking for a motel.”

            “There ain’t no motels out here, Mister.” 

            “How about a place to camp?”

            “Let me think about that, Mister.” He stares at the emblem on Jackson red baseball cap, mystified. Jackson glances over his shoulder. From this angle, he can see a confederate flag stretched over the rear window of the Chevy.

“You do that.” As Jackson sidesteps the man, he can feel the man’s sour gaze. He hopes to avoid any more scenes like in Eden.

There are more bugs in the building than outside; metal shelves are empty, a calendar is five years old, black grease stains on the floor. The attendant is watching a small black and white television on the counter.

            “Twenty dollars on pump number–”

            “There’s only one that works,” the clerk rumbles.

            “Alright,” Jackson says, “I’ll take twenty on the one that works.”

            “I got a man out there using it,” he says. “So you’ll just have to hold your horses.”

            Jackson puts the money on the counter covered with grease. The clerk snatches it up instantly and stuffs it into his flannel shirt. Outside, the goateed man is talking excitedly to the driver of the truck.

 “Oh,” he says to clerk, “but the color green is alright with you.”

“It never bothered me none.”

“Give me a Coke.”

“Two dollars.”

The clerk passes Jackson a dusty can.

            “Where’s your restroom?”

            “If you mean the can,” the clerk answers. “It’s not for customers.”

Jackson circles the building twice before deciding to relieve his bladder on an old tire. From porcelain to rubber, he thinks ironically, Harvard to Princeton, Astronomy to the Department of Justice.  How many more steps down the ladder would he accept? When would he grab onto a rung, hold there, gather strength and climb?  He zips his trousers and returns to the car, shaking his head.

In the twilight, the driver of the truck is now moving towards the back of the building, his hips turning awkwardly away from his knees with each step. His eyes are tucked under the brim of a cowboy hat, but Jackson can still feel them.

“Don’t mind that asshole,” the goateed man calls out. “He ain’t once been outside of Bear County his whole life. He got a bum leg. Can you see it? He’s been teased about it since he was a little kid.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He hates seeing people lookin’ at him.”

Jackson pours the lukewarm contents of the can his dry throat, but watches the man from the corner of his eye.

“Shit, I don’t care,” Jackson says slyly, “we all have weaknesses.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

Jackson removes the nozzle from the rusting pumps and inserts it into the Wagoneer. A knot between his shoulders has crawled down his back. He needs a bath and a double-sized bed but will settle for a quiet night in his new tent from REI. 

The driver of the truck returns from the “can” and heaps his six-foot-five frame into the cab, leg last, scowling.

Twenty bucks would be enough to get him away from this creepy filling station and better still, enough to increase the distance between him and the stranger. At the same moment, one of the men leaves on foot and the other in an automobile.  He glances at the road half expecting to find the stranger sauntering up to the weedy building, hat pulled over his eyes, canvas bag at his side. Jackson lets up on the nozzle slowly; lets the numbers carefully click off . . . $19.97 . . . . $19.98 . . . . $19.99.  Two hours later, they meet.

The red truck idles up slow.

Stops.

“Come to think of it,” says the goateed man, “there is a nice campground ten miles south of here. It’s past a little town named Alamo. Careful you don’t miss it. Just off Highway Thirteen. There ain’t no other place to set down fer’ another hundred miles. 'Less you want to park on the side of the road and sleep in your vehicle. No telling what sort of person might creep up on you, though. The campground’s called City of Rocks, and the ranger there is a real nice fellow.”

Jackson thanks the men and rethinks his position on squirrels.

* * *

Highway 13 thrusts into darkness, but the Wagoneer presses on. Jackson’s dark pupils swim in pools of moonlight. He checks the rearview mirror; eyes his tired reflection.  The azure glow from the dashboard lights creates a strange shadow: his black-rimed glasses pressing down on his face like a ghoulish mask.

The Wagoneer’s headlights illuminate a sign:

              City of Rocks Campground

Jackson turns left onto a lonely dirt road and coasts through the dark campground. He is extra cautious about staying safely on the narrow road. It does not take him long to find a vacant lot. The campground is nearly empty.  He cuts the engine and sits in the night, alone with the events of the day. He removes his glasses and closes his eyes tight; rubs them black. He stretches, yawns, and steps out of the Wagoneer assessing the shadows: trees, shrubs, campers, and on the horizon, another mountain range. 

He can hear buzzing between his ears --the motor un-spooling three-hundred miles of road like ribbon but soon, the buzzing fades and the sound of chirping crickets can be heard. He wishes for a chair to magically appear behind him so that he may fall into it; fall into his vacation.  His mind begins to wander. Images appear: faces he watched go by in his driver’s side window, rolling landscapes, dashboard gages, bug spatter, road kill, and lit by a brilliant sunset, the stranger.

Jackson rubs his eyes again, harder, but the image of the stranger continues to slowly move at him --sauntering along the centerline of the highway, strolling into his nightmares.    

“You can’t camp here.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“No, Mister.” A flashlight burns into Jackson eyes, “I’m the ranger here, and you can’t camp here.”

“I’m sorry. . .” the light is blinding, Jackson cannot see who he is talking